Prep Rally

A youth hockey coach in Massachusetts narrowly avoided tragedy on Feb. 28, likely saving the lives of several of his Norwood Youth Hockey players.

About two dozen kids were taking the ice at Canton Metropolis Skating Rink around 7 a.m. when the coach heard a loud snap over his head. He immediately yelled for everyone to clear the ice, and they are lucky he did.

Less than a minute later, the roof came crashing down. As reported by New England Cable News (NECN), no one was injured.

“We were like, ‘Why are we alive?'” coach

Another coach added that at least seven players had been standing right where the pieces of roof landed.

The Canton fire department said the roof collapsed under the weight of the snow piled on top. The Boston area has been pummeled by near-record amounts of snow this winter (about three more inches and the city will pass its all-time seasonal record).

For National Association of Christian Athletes (NACA) teams, there's no bigger stage than the national finals. Last week, Szymon Walczak took full advantage.

With his Grundy Mountain (V.A.) Mission School and Our Savior (N.Y.) knotted at 58-58 with 1.5 seconds left in their first-round match-up, Walczak took an inbounds pass, turned, and launched an awkward shot towards the net.

The shot gave Mountain Mission the 61-58 win and a spot in the second round.

The problem with the jerseys? They featured pink lettering, and pink is not an official school color. The jerseys were from breast cancer awareness month.

"Breast cancer awareness is in October, and there's a process for people to request color change," City Section commissioner John Aguirre told the L.A. Times. "The principal didn't even know about these numbers. If they're going to blatantly disregard these rules and regulations, they're going to affect kids."

Based on what the coach told the Times, it doesn't sound like she was blatantly disregarding a rule.

The boys basketball team at Vanguard College Prep (Waco, Texas), recently showed true sportsmanship as they prepared to play the Gainesville (Texas) Tornadoes.

Gainesville is a youth correctional facility for felony offenders, where good behavior is rewarded by a spot on the basketball team. If they're not on the team, students at Gainesville are not permitted to leave the school - i.e., they can't travel to cheer on their classmates. Few parents make the trip, leaving the fan section empty at many Gainesville games.

Vanguard players Ben Martinsen and Hudson Bradley appreciate how hard it is to play in an empty gym, they told CBS News, so they decided that they'd recruit people to cheer for Gainesville.

According to CBS,

The Gainesville players had no idea what was happening. They walked onto the court to find their own signs of support, their own cheerleaders, even their own fan section. Half the crowd was assigned to cheer for Gainesville. But as the game went on, everybody started to cheer for Gainesville.

The name "St. Brown" stands out on the back of a football jersey much more than simply "Brown" does.

That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the St. Brown brothers – Osiris, Amon-Ra and Equanimeous, names you likely aren't familiar with now, but soon will be. All three brothers are Division I football prospects – Equanimeous has already committed to play receiver at Notre Dame next season, Osiris, a sophomore has an offer, while Amon-Ra, only a freshman already has two scholarship offers.

Let's start with those names. They're named after Egyptian Gods, at least Osiris and Amon-Ra. Equanimeous is a bit more complicated.

"A lot of people ask about our names," Amon-Ra said. "I have to tell the story every time, and I just say my dad is different, so he gave us different names."

The Texas news anchor known for lessons on empathy and equality is back, this time offering advice for the administrators at Flower Mound High School.

WFAA anchor Dale Hansen dedicated his Feb. 24 "Dale Unplugged" segment to what happened at a Feb. 13 boys basketball game between Flower Mound and Plano East Senior High, and the way the community reacted to the incident.

Two students in Flower Mound's bleachers held up signs that said "White" and "Power." The school administration initially claimed the "white" sign just represented the school's colors and that the "power" was usually held up as part of "Jaguar Power." They said there was no racist intent.

Parents added that the media and Twitter community were blowing the incident out of proportion, that the kids had five signs and just randomly grabbed two and it was an unfortunate coincidence that the two they chose read "White Power" when held together.

Riverdale and Smyrna High Schools are both in Rutherford County. On Wednesday, the county director of schools, Don Odom, announced that both coaches are suspended for the entire 2015-2016 season, without pay.

"Good athletic coaches possess skills that maximize the players' skills, strategize winning game plans, instill self-discipline, and impart the value of teamwork to reach a common goal," he wrote in a press release.

The attempt to tank was blatantly obvious, with Riverdale players intentionally missing free throws and Smyrna players trying to score on the wrong basket. The referee halted the game to speak with the coaches, telling them that they would not be allowed to make a mockery of the game. He reported the incident to the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association (TSSAA) as soon as it ended.

Most parents are proud when their two-year-old kids string words together into cohesive sentences. Imagine how Cincinnati Bengals long-snapper Clark Harris and his wife, Jessica, must have felt as they watched their son on Tuesday night, as two-year-old Trent Harris sang the national anthem at a high school basketball game in New Jersey.

Clark escorted Trent onto the court, handed him the microphone, and stuck around for the first few lines. Seeing that Trent was cool as could be, owning the floor in a little blazer and button-down, Clark walked off to the side.

Trent never missed a beat – and he's articulate, to boot. Naturally, his parents were proud.

Former NFL player Artrell Hawkins Jr. was recently offered the chance to coach football at his alma mater, Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, Pa. At a press conference announcing the hiring, he said he felt like he'd been hired to coach at Notre Dame.

Within days, though, the school rescinded the offer. It appears administrators had not completed a background check before offering Hawkins the position. Once they did, they realized he was not an appropriate choice.

“Coaching successions go through a formal process. … Unfortunately, this process was not appropriately followed in this circumstance,” school officials wrote in a statement.

The Associated Press reports that the decision was related to a domestic violence arrest last year in Cinncinnati, but the school's public relations spokesperson did not respond when the AP asked if that was the reason.

Two Tennessee high school girls' basketball teams saw their state tournaments end early on Saturday, but not because they lost a tough game. Quite the opposite: they're out because they purposely tried to lose. One team went as far as trying to score in the other team's basket.

The referee in the Feb. 21 game between Riverdale (Tenn.) and Smyrna (Tenn.) reported it to the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, writing that Riverdale “missed 12-16 free throws intentionally," while Smyrna “wouldn’t get the ball across the half-court line to get a 10-second count or to make us call an over and back violation intentionally.”

At one point a Riverdale player "looked at one of the officials and gave the official a 3-second signal wanting him to call three seconds on her. Smyrna stood in the lane as well to have us call three seconds on them.”